Filleting Knives

A filleting knife is the most specialised blade most cooks will own, and for anyone who prepares whole fish it is the difference between clean fillets and wasted flesh. The defining feature is flex. A long, narrow, flexible blade can bend along the ribcage and follow the natural contours of a fish, lifting a fillet cleanly off the frame instead of tearing through it, and the same flex lets you lay the blade flat against the skin to remove it in one pass. Add a fine tip for starting cuts behind the head and around pin bones, and you have a tool that does something no chef's knife can. Every filleting knife we stock is Japanese made, from KOTAI, MAC, Tamahagane and KAI, ground thin and sharpened keenly in the Japanese tradition.

Because our filleting knives are all flexible blades, the decision that matters most is length. A shorter blade around 16 to 18 cm is easier to control on smaller fish such as trout, mackerel or sea bass, and gives you more finesse on close work like trimming and pin bones. A longer blade of 18 to 20 cm lets you take a full fillet off a larger fish in a single clean stroke rather than sawing at it, which matters on salmon sides, cod and larger sea fish. If you handle a mixture, a blade around 18 cm is the sensible middle ground. Japanese-made filleting knives are typically ground thinner and sharpened more acutely than Western equivalents, often to around 15 degrees per side, which is what allows them to part flesh so cleanly with so little waste.